This is one of the most brilliant and distinctive novels I've ever read. An absolute tour de force. It takes place in Japan at the turn of the 18th century, when the Dutch East India Company had a station on Dejima, a tiny artificial island just off Nagasaki. This trading post was Japan's only connection with the outside world. And it's here that young, upright (and uptight) Jacob de Zoet comes as a clerk, to discover that the Company's operation is riddled with corruption. His attempts to do the right thing make his life very difficult.
He soon meets Miss Aibagawa, a badly scarred but still beautiful Japanese midwife who has been given permission to receive medical training from the Dutch doctor on Dejima. Their hopeless love story is the central theme of the book.
At one stage when Miss Aibagawa has been imprisoned in a monastery the book threatens to veer off into thriller territory, but David Mitchell somehow manages to rein it in and make it part of the whole.
His portrait of Japan seen through the eyes of a sympathetic westerner is fascinating, and Jacob de Zoet is himself fascinated (and sometimes appalled) by what he sees. He secretly learns Japanese (not strictly speaking allowed) and the difficulties both sides have in understanding each other is cleverly portrayed.
The writing is superbly controlled. Storytelling is at its heart. As well as the author telling the central story, the characters themselves often tell stories, in a wide variety of styles. And there are some fantastic descriptions which don't distract from the action but just draw you deeper in. There's one virtuosic passage describing a gull circling over Nagasaki and what it would see below. It goes on for a page and half and just as you think it's getting almost poetic you realise that it's actually rhyming!
As you'll have gathered, I quite liked it!
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